Focus 2.2 - Analysis: Respect for Food

Vocabulary

Environmental relates to the natural world and the impact of human activity on its condition.Famine is widespread and severe food insecurity, which particularly affects the elderly and children.Global is of or relating to the whole world; worldwide.Impact is the action of one object coming forcibly into contact with another.Local is belonging or relating to a particular area or neighbourhood, typically exclusively so. Malnutrition is the lack of proper nutrition caused by not having enough to eat, not eating enough of the right things, or being unable to use the food that one does eat.Production is the action of making or manufacturing from components or raw materials, or the process of being so manufactured. Security is the state of being free from danger or threat.

Purpose - Food Security Challenges

In sub-unit 2.1 children identified what is meant by food security and determined how food secure their community is. In this sub-unit, children analyze the social and environmental challenges in food production and distribution and examine how this impacts the food security of a community.

Child Asks: What environmental and social issues affect the production and distribution of food?Children's Rights Education: Provides ways to analyze the social and environmental challenges in food production and distribution.Child Answers: There are many ways to produce and distribute food, and some are not good for the future.

Classroom Learning Activities

1. Malnutrition

Malnutrition affects many children when they don't have enough food to eat. This child is being measured to determine how malnourished he is - red indicates danger!

Malnutrition can also occur when we eat lots of food, but not the right kinds. Foods high in salt, fat, and sugar are not nourishing for our bodies.

The Hidden HungerA malnourished person finds that their body has difficulty doing normal things such as growing and resisting disease. Physical work becomes problematic and even learning abilities can be diminished. For women, pregnancy becomes risky and they cannot be sure of producing nourishing breast milk.

When a person is not getting enough food or not getting the right sort of food, malnutrition is just around the corner. Disease is often a factor, either as a result or contributing cause. Even if people get enough to eat, they will become malnourished if the food they eat does not provide the proper amounts of micronutrients - vitamins and minerals - to meet daily nutritional requirements. Malnutrition is the largest single contributor to disease, according to the UN's Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN).Malnutrition at an early age leads to reduced physical and mental development during childhood. Stunting, for example, affects more than 147 million pre-schoolers in developing countries, according to SCN's World Nutrition Situation 5th report. Iodine deficiency, the same report shows, is the world's greatest single cause of mental retardation and brain damage.Undernutrition affects school performance and studies have shown it often leads to a lower income as an adult. It also causes women to give birth to low birth-weight babies.

Around the world we produce enough food to keep everyone well-fed and well-nourished. So why do we have so many people who are malnourished? That is because of the following cycle:

Food as a Commodity - it goes where the money is: poverty stops food from being distributed evenly between countries and communities.

Migration to Urban Areas - As people move from rural areas to the city, the hunger becomes an urban problem.

The mass production and distribution of food has enabled the expansion of urban areas. This has resulted in 3 food security issues which impact our choices around the food we eat. They include:

Poverty - You need money to access food. People have ways to cope when they don't have enough money for food. When the Hungry Season hits individuals and families, people have to resort to collecting food from dumps or prostitution to pay for food. This degrades their dignity. When people are poor they tend to buy the cheaper processed foods that have less nutritional value instead of buying more nutrient dense foods.

Malnutrition - As opposed to hunger, malnutrition happens when we don't get all the right nutrients for our bodies over a long period of time. But a body doesn't crave vitamins in the same way as it craves a full stomach. This leads to the consumption of fast foods to satisfy this hunger. These foods are packed with lots of fats, sugars, and salts, and they are abundant in chemicals that make us crave more of these foods. They make us feel full, but they give us empty calories that leave us undernourished. Many of these foods are highly aspirational and families will save up to go for a meal to KFC, for example.

Gender - Most of the worlds poor are women because many women end up in lower paying, less skilled jobs, or will earn less than men even at the same level of skill. They don't get paid spending time looking after the family and they are more likely to carry the cost of looking after kids. Pregnancy and early child care disrupt education and work opportunities. In many developing countries, more households are headed by women. As there is a link between poverty and food secure households, women headed households will be less food secure than households where the main breadwinner is a man.

Created for The Open Society of South Africa

The Hidden GFCThe world might be in the process of rebounding from the global financial crisis, but did you know that we are experiencing another GFC? The Global Food Crisis. This food crisis is due to factors including population growth, decreasing land and resources and the ways we use and store food. Changing climatic conditions also affect the amount of food available. Many experts are predicting that this crisis will become worse in the next forty or so years. This problem is frequently called 'food security'.

3. Fighting Hunger the Rights Way

The activities in Fighting Hunger the Rights Way were designed to use the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as a framework for teaching students about malnutrition and related topics. Children’s rights are a fundamental theme in activities in this resource (e.g., viewing child malnutrition as a violation of children’s rights). It is important that students consider children’s rights when completing each activity (see pages 6-7 for more details regarding some of the specific rights focused on in this resource). It is also important for teachers to ensure that students keep an optimistic attitude when completing activities. Students should feel that youth can have a positive impact on their community, country and/or world.

The introductory activities should be completed prior to all other activities. Students will need to have a general understanding of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and World Food Programme’s (WFP) Food Force game in order to complete activities in Fighting Hunger the Rights Way. Students should be introduced to the Convention through the introductory activities in the Food Unit first, and then to Food Force, so that they may view child malnutrition as a violation of children’s rights and humanitarian aid as efforts to attain and adhere to children’s rights.

Relevant Convention Articles

Article 61. States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life.2. States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.Article 241. States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. States Parties shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services.2. States Parties shall pursue full implementation of this right and, in particular, shall take appropriate measures:(a) To diminish infant and child mortality;(b) To ensure the provision of necessary medical assistance and health care to all children with emphasis on the development of primary health care;(c) To combat disease and malnutrition, including within the framework of primary health care, through, inter alia, the application of readily available technology and through the provision of adequate nutritious foods and clean drinking-water, taking into consideration the dangers and risks of environmental pollution;(d) To ensure appropriate pre-natal and post-natal health care for mothers;(e) To ensure that all segments of society, in particular parents and children, are informed, have access to education and are supported in the use of basic knowledge of child health and nutrition, the advantages of breastfeeding, hygiene and environmental sanitation and the prevention of accidents;(f) To develop preventive health care, guidance for parents and family planning education and services.3. States Parties shall take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children.4. States Parties undertake to promote and encourage international co-operation with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the right recognized in the present article. In this regard, particular account shall be taken of the needs of developing countries.